


The Writing on the Wall

by orphan_account



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:27:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25036231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: On the back wall of the console room, "Bad Wolf" is carved in red Gallifreyan. It's the first, but certainly not the last.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	The Writing on the Wall

The trouble about having a telepathic timeship, he supposed, was that she got inside his head a bit too often.

Case in point: the red Gallifreyan she had scrawled boldly across the back wall of the console room. "Bad Wolf." He supposed it was a fitting tribute to the woman that had brought him back from the edge after the Time War.

He threw his trench coat over one of the struts before stepping closer and carefully tracing his fingertips over the engraving. Yes, he could get used to it.

But he'd definitely not translate it for anyone else; this was a bit too close to wearing his heart on his sleeve—literally.

\---

Later, after Rose was gone for good, and he was left sitting against the console and staring up at the Gallifreyan, he wished he had told her. Wished he had shown her how much he cared, how his ship had carved her there permanently just as she was forever carved into his heart.

The red Gallifreyan looked more like a wound carved into the surface, now. He supposed that was fitting.

\---

He assumed it would only be Bad Wolf on that wall, forever. After all, Martha Jones was a brilliant woman but had nothing of her own on the wall. But then eventually, after a very good day, he came back with his face still warmed into a smile to see a new etching.

There, next to Bad Wolf, was The Most Important Woman in the Universe.

He stared at it long enough to cause Donna to shout at him to pay attention before he snapped out of it and leapt to the console.

Though she did ask, he didn't translate. He wasn't ready to bare his heart like that. She was his best friend, and he cared for her enough to have her permanently carved into his hearts, but he was still a coward.

\---

It didn't get any easier, the losing people. Now he just had more tangible symbols of his regrets, following him forever, no matter how far he ran.

\---

He had a new face, and the console room looked almost entirely new, but the etching remained. So did the pain in his hearts. The two were probably related.

He wondered, if he rearranged to knock the console wall down, weather those wounds would remain. Were the scars in the fabric of his heart as immutable as the scars in the skin of the universe?

\---

It didn't happen with everyone that traveled with him. But the ones he held closest, the wounds that could never heal, the love that he would never allow to fade--those always showed and stayed.

It hurt, but he clutched onto the physical evidence of their brilliance desperately. The wound, the hurting, those were just the proof that they were once there.

The Girl Who Waited was the next on the wall, with The Lone Centurion carved close soon after. Eventually, Hell in High Heels trailed after. He loved them, and loved them, and mourned them.

\---

He hid up on his cloud, unsure whether he could bear to carry any more wounds. But then The Impossible girl fell into his life, carving her way into his hearts, and he had his answer.

\---

He knew, after the confession dial, that he had been wrong. When he looked up at the engraving of The Impossible Girl and felt only a hollow ache where his treasured memories once were, he made a vow to himself.

He had been so close once, comparing them to scars in the skin of the universe. For those people he cared for so deeply, he had been willing to tear apart anything. 

Each of them had been destroyed because he didn't know how to let them go. If he continued on this way, he'd destroy everything in his path just to keep those wounds fresh a little longer, delay the day they started to scar.

He needed to stop.

The Doctor could no longer destroy the universe for his own selfishness, not like this.

\---

When he met Bill, he could feel that rush of affection. She activated his long-dormant parental instincts, made him care for her again as a close friend and protegee.

When he caught himself starting to care too much, he cut that train off quickly. 

The Doctor took longer solo trips between their adventures, spent long hours meditating on his pain and loss.

In the end, it would have been inevitable that she end up on the wall. But then they met the cybermen, and Bill was gone before she had the chance to carve her name it.

The mourning wasn't made any easier, really, without her name on the wall. He stared at its blank space for many hours, until the TARDIS rumbled with love and concern and forced him off to the kitchen for a cup of tea.

\---

The Doctor couldn't travel without humans for too long without going dark, she knew that.

But neither could she welcome them into her hearts the way she used to. Bill was brilliant, but a danger. She should never have allowed anyone so close of she was trying to prevent another name scrawled in red.

This time around, she was cleverer: no more sharing, no more closeness, no more wounds.

She called them her family, to remind herself. She had known the other Time Lords were danger, but it was all too easy to forget the destruction caused by having humans on board. She wouldn't make the same mistake again.

The Doctor talked and talked, but never about herself. She showed them species and planets and hundreds of stars, but never even named her own until it was dragged from her. She flitted around, hands flapping with excitement, but never settled a casual touch on her friends' shoulders or hugged any of them.

She liked the fam, but the Doctor had been clever in making herself unable to care for them in the dangerous way, in the deep way, in the way that never quite faded.

So why did winning hurt so much?

\---

Her world was torn apart by all she had learned and by the years she was forced to spend in prison with nothing to do with reflect on it.

Everything about herself could be a lie. Those eternal scars, burned into the back of her eyes when the TARDIS had been too far away, were her only constants.

The Doctor was a construct built on false memories and falsehoods. But her love for them, for Bad Wolf, and the Most Important Woman in the Universe and The Girl Who Waited and The Lone Centurion and The Impossible Girl--that was real.

Those were the only pieces of herself she could rely on, once she was back in the TARDIS and set about the task of stitching herself back together bit by bit.

\---

Graham and Ryan still came along sometimes, but in the end it was Yaz who stayed right beside her.

The Doctor couldn't help but notice how selfless Yaz was, how brave, how kind. The more they traveled together, the more the Doctor opened up to Yaz.

She tried to travel alone, tried to get herself to remove Yaz from the ship, but found herself weak in a way she hadn't been in so long. Her scars would never heal, but for the first time in thousands (billions) of years, they were made bearable again.

The Doctor refused to give Yaz any nickname, even inside her own head, and pretended that that would be insurance enough.

Each day, she chased one more adventure together, one more journey by each others' sides, and lied to herself that she would make sure it was the last.

\---

It was after one of the adventures with all four of them together, where Yaz had spoken softly to a frightened child in comfort even though she was terrified herself, that they wandered into the console room to see it on the back wall.

The Woman Who Wanted More.

The Doctor was frozen for a long moment, sick with regret and fear, before leaping at the console to punch in the coordinated for Sheffield.

She wasn't proud of the way she pleaded with the TARDIS then, the lies she told. It couldn't be that bad yet; Yaz didn't even know her, not really; she could still undo it.

The TARDIS beeped indignantly at being blamed, forcing the Doctor to face fact: the Gallifreyan on the wall was only a reflection of her own heart.

The boys left when she yelled at everyone to go away.

Yaz, her brilliant Yaz, afraid-but-always-brave Yaz stayed, held her as she cried, rubbed soothing circles into her back when she curled up silently.

The Doctor hated herself for needing the comfort.

\---

Hours later, the Doctor finally uncurled from the console floor, allowing blood back into Yaz's leg that she had pinned.

They looked up at the new engraving together, one with resignation and the other with curiosity.

Hollowed out by her grief, without the usual shame and fear that held her back, the Doctor explained the carvings to another living being for the first time.

She told of her closest friends her sole confidantes, her partners. The people she would carry forever, long after the rest of the universe would wither away.

She laid bare her heartache, dreading when Yaz would promise to stay forever, tell her to not be sad, try to cheer her up. Dreading the day those rosy promises would be cut short, as Yaz died in front of her.

Instead, to her surprise, Yaz said nothing. She only curled into the Doctor's side, holding her close and crying tears that weren't her own.

\---

After getting so used to the cycle of wither and decay, the Doctor was surprised to feel something inside of herself bloom.

\---

She kept Yaz close; how could she not?

There were decades of kisses, of adventures, of promises made and kept and strengthened. She loved her and loved her and loved her.

And one day, when Yaz died doing what she loved, cradled in the arms of someone who loved her and without a single regret on her lips, the Doctor went back to look at the wall.

For the first time, she saw not scars, but promises.

\---

The Doctor of Hope went out into the universe and found love and loss and love again, just as Yaz had asked of her.

Name by name, that console wall continued to fill for countless more centuries.

The Doctor looked at those crimson names, her two newest charges scuffling by the TARDIS doors behind her, and smiled at the Woman Who Found More.

For all her loss, her scarred heart was so full.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi yes I know I have 2 WIPs going but this story happened unexpectedly. I am still writing the two other stories and the second chapter of Burned Out should be posted soon-ish, for anyone wondering about it.
> 
> This really wasn't edited much, but such is life.
> 
> Also, I can't tell if this idea came from inside my head or if I read something similar, fell asleep and had a fever dream about it, then had my brain regurgitate it. If you know where this idea came from or if I unintentionally riffed off someone else's story, please lmk so I could credit them or throw this work into the sun. Thanks!


End file.
